Part One of Updike’s Decades Spanning Quartet is One of the Most Dramatically Powerful Books I’ve Ever Read

I’m a man that uses a lot of hyperbole. Maybe I use the MOST hyperbole out of ANYONE in the WORLD. I know that about myself, and it’s something I’m trying to rein in, especially when it’s come to my beloved ShoBooVie.

But sometimes ya boy just reads books that actually merit the hyperbole, and John Updike’s “Rabbit, Run” is one of them, as legitimately one of the most impactful, dramatic, and powerful books I’ve ever read.

Initially, though, I wasn’t into it. I thought it sort of fit the mold of your classic “white guy with a good life goes through a midlife crisis,” which I’m always pretty meh with because most of these characters are leading pretty decent lives and are, essentially, just bitching.

And that’s how “Rabbit, Run” starts, with the eponymous character, Harry “Rabbit” Angstrom, a former basketball star and now frustrated husband and father, abruptly leaves his family in a bout of existential terror at where his life is going. Or, rather, where it isn’t going. His marriage to his wife, Janice, isn’t particularly loving, that’s true, as she’s a borderline alcoholic and pregnant with their second child, and Rabbit works a miserable job as a peeler salesman, but Rabbit doesn’t do himself many favors, so didn’t really have much of my sympathy the first chunk of the novel.

But then Rabbit’s world gets fleshed out as he meets and lives with a part-time prostitute, Ruth, and begins to be advised by a young, disillusioned priest, Jack Eccles. After spending most of the first part of the novel in Rabbit’s head, Updike pivots to inject some glimpses into the psyche of these characters as well, and also Janice later, and in doing so builds out a much more intriguing, involving narrative speaking to the existential fear amongst a cast of characters, and not just one. This existential fear becomes more and more complex too, as at one point even Rabbit becomes a very fascinating character as he vacillates between the things that he believes are important one moment, and finds them unimportant the next.

All of this slowly builds into what is the most tragic final stretches of any novel I’ve ever read, as a massive, unfathomable tragedy strikes Harry’s family. Here the incredible psychology that Updike has written with and steadily increased the impact of explodes in a sequence of scenes in the last 60/70 pages of the book, and it is amazing stuff. Just drama of the absolute highest order. There are scenes that are going to live with me for a long time. I read this on a plane and had to stop myself from ugly crying. And the novel ends with a cliffhanger that just takes your breath away.

This is pretty amazing stuff, and Updike actually revisits Rabbit’s character in 3 more books that he wrote every 10 years or so as the character ages, and I can’t WAIT to read them.